Swiftcurrent Creek hurray for the riff raff

Young Bones now felt reasonably familiar with and settled into the creek's territory, having spent three whole days exploring its every nook and cranny. Presently, she walked along the water, keeping an eye out for fish, frogs or snakes to catch for an easy meal. The noontime sun hung in a perfectly blue sky and a slight breeze ruffled the pewter fur of her nape. It smelled vaguely salty, which made the youth's stomach pinch, yet she brushed off the feeling.

It was now time to find her pack mates, get to know them and, of course, start asking around about her father. Armed with only his name, Bones was inexplicably convinced she would find him somewhere around here. Most likely the result of her limited worldview and guilelessness, she personally chalked it up to a special instinct she must possess, as if his shared blood called to her own, orienting her inner compass.

The pup licked her dry lips and located a clear patch of fresh grass on the shore. She circled and sat down, then slid forward onto her belly. She dipped her paws into the water and relaxed, taking a break to lay in the sunshine before she continued her dual vocations: finding pack mates and locating her father. Maybe, if Bones was really lucky, he was here and she could kill two birds with one stone!

Despite his incredibly flighty tendencies, Haunter returned to the Creek and considered it his "home-base" if nothing else. The days had warmed considerably and he was consistently filling his belly, which put him in a good mood as far as Haunter's good moods went. His pre-dawn patrol was just ending, and he wound up at the heart of Swiftcurrent with the brazen sun on his shadowy back and his equally as yellow eyes set on the territory's namesake.

Lengthy legs took him to the closer to the edge of the rushing creek, but he paused when he noticed a young figure some yards to his right that he'd mistaken for a rock pile at a distance. He stared for an unnervingly long moment, but then reverted back to his original task which was to take a drink. He crouched and inclined his long muzzle, taking long, refreshing laps of the still winter-cool water.

When another wolf appeared and it was male, the youth's heart leapt, especially upon seeing his pelt, black and lustrous as a raven's wing. Her father had black fur! She knew this from Cutlass's description of him, which she'd only shared when young Bones had badgered it out of her. (Bones never considered the possibility that Cutlass could've been fibbing.) Her mother hadn't mentioned a missing ear, however, which caused the juvenile's lips to press together in a stern expression that made her look years older. Maybe he'd lost it recently...?

"Oy, matey!" she called out to get his attention, unaware that he'd already spotted her and chosen to take a drink rather than acknowledge her. The plucky youngster sprang lithely to her feet and walked right up to him. "Yer name isn't Atticus, is it?" she asked in a skeptical voice. Before giving him a chance to answer, she peered at his ear (or lack thereof) and questioned loudly and inquisitively, "Did you lose that in a shark attack?"

Yellow eyes swiveled sideways (not bothering to cease his drinking) as the pile of rocks young female trounced over, beckoning him in an accent he couldn't place. Haunter's laps slowed as his gaze acknowledged her, only half-concentrating on the halfling as he was yet unsatisfied with his drink, but listening nonetheless. She asked him then if his name was Atticus, and before he could swallow his last tongue-full in order to answer her, she was firing off another question about his ear.

Haunter swung his head towards the youth, drawing his salmon-pink tongue over his dripping chops and then answering her flatly: "No." It was an answer to serve for both questions from the young, pewter-tinged female, and he blinked at her languidly in the expectation of more. Had he been a more interesting or joking wolf, he might've explained to her that one ears were all the rage this year.

She smelled freshly of the Creek, so he didn't bother asking if she actually belonged here, though he had wondered as such at first (despite seeing her as a non-threat). He wondered a lot of things about this young wolf, but lacked the social capacity to ask right away.

When he looked at her rather disinterestedly, Bones just knew: this wasn't her father. His flat tone served to drive this point home. Another pup might have wilted under his hard stare and tough demeanor, yet young Bones didn't let it discourage her. Of course, she was a little sad this wasn't the man for whom she searched, yet that just meant he was a fellow crew member! (For the moment, at least, it didn't occur to consider he might be an intruder.) Her tail waved and she grinned crookedly at the one-eared male, clearly undeterred by his initial, cool reception.

"Well," she said after a beat, the word sounding more like a drawled wall, "what is yer name, then? I'm Bones. That's short for Crossbones." She winked a pale green eye, though she couldn't say why. "Is it Ol' One Ear?" she guessed, once again firing off another question before he'd had the chance to answer the first one.

Her way of talking might've been humorous to a wolf more inclined to humor, but he didn't think much of it besides the fact that he had to concentrate a little harder on a few of her words to understand. He sat down before the freshly introduced Crossbones, swiping his tongue across his jaws once more before slowly deciding to answer her. He had rolled his eyes away from her at her given nickname of him, but it was more out of not wishing to stare so intently at her than actual irritation.

"As accurate as that is," he rumbled, voice still raspy although he'd had plenty of conversational opportunity within the confines of the Creek (perhaps this was simply the way he sounded); "my real name is Haunter." He was gradual to talk, so she might've said plenty of other things before he finally said: "but Ol' One Ear works just as well."

It was difficult to tell why, but perhaps because she was young, Haunter was actually accommodating her jocosity.

If he didn't seem to particularly enjoy her sense of humor, at least he rolled with it. Bones found this rather funny, particularly in combination with his very dry, raspy tone. He didn't seem to think much of her on the surface, though the youth suspected he just tried to present an indifferent front while, deep down, he was laughing at her silly, forward questions.

"What if I called you Haunt-ear?" she questioned. "'Cause your ear's nothin' but a ghost!" she crowed after a beat, grinning toothily and thumping a paw on the ground. Whether or not he accepted this nickname as easily as the first, young Bones found she already thought of him by this alias; it would be sticking, for better or worse.

"Do you happen to know an Atticus or if an Atticus lives here?" she queried after a moment, spring green eyes shining with curiosity and raw hope.

This one fancied herself a comedian of sorts. Something inside Haunter wanted to laugh, but he convinced himself that it would somehow come out condescendingly or like he was laughing at her. He also rationalized that a laugh was a laugh to this youngster and she would not differentiate in tones, but this was a secondary thought made too late after the fact for him to still verbally enjoy the joke. So as per his norm, Haunt-ear Haunter was mostly silent.

He did however offer her an improvised shrug to her choice in nickname. She could've called him "Shithaunt" for as long as she knew him, and he likely wouldn't have batted an eyelash. She offered another subject then, or rather returned to a subject she'd been addressing previously when she had asked him if his name was Atticus. "I've met no Atticus here or otherwise," he told her, but this wasn't saying much as Haunter hadn't actually met very many wolves in Teekon nor anywhere else for that matter. It was clear that he had tended to keep to himself.

"I assume he is big and black?" he rumbled ponderously, peering down at her with a quirked brow hardly seen amongst his pitch-dark features. "Why are you looking for him?" Haunter knew not where his sudden curiosity was coming from. Pack life seemed to be getting to him somewhat...

Haunter (alias: Haunt-ear) replied that he did not know anyone called Atticus, causing Bones's brow to furrow and lips to purse, though only for a second. In the next instant, her gray face broke into a smile again and she shrugged as if to say, Ah, well, no big deal!

"Yes! Well, black... I don't know if he's big," Bones admitted. When asked about her motive, she shared, "He's me dad! He doesn't even know it, though. He and me mother only knew each other a day," she explained shamelessly. "Me mother's a tramp," she added, opting for another title besides the usual wench. Calling her mother names still gave her such satisfaction.

This one certainly bounced back quick enough, he noticed, and Haunter found that he was more focused on young Bones than he typically was with anyone else. He attributed it to her age, but couldn't be certain as he'd never had children of his own and hadn't exactly been allowed near many wolves' youngsters.

She shared—perhaps overshared with him—what she knew about Atticus and then concluded with calling her mother a "tramp", which warranted a slight widening of his eyes. He regarded her for a long moment, and then decidedly shrugged. "In my opinion, that makes your father no different," he mused, wondering why she garnished so much respect and would willfully search for a parent she had never even met. If her father had the gall to lay with a female and then not stick around, then he obviously had cared as little as she did about the outcome.

Still, he was sure she had her reasons for disliking her mother more. "And being the child of two tramps as you are, does that mean I should call you Little Tramp?" As soon as he'd said it, Haunter remembered why he didn't make jokes—it simply wasn't his forte.

Haunter pointed out that, if her mother was a tramp, then so was her father. Although she wanted to protest, Bones processed this for a beat and then said, "Maybe so! But he didn't know about me and didn't purposefully neglect me and my siblings!" she defended the unknown Atticus. "He didn't even know about us. Me mother ran away on him." Even if her sire had anticipated the possible results of their tryst, Cutlass had cut and run, or so Bones figured.

His joke earned a burst of laughter from her. "I prefer Scamp, if anything," she rejoined with a wink of a pale green eye, proving her unflappability. "And I'm not that little. Me legs are almost as long as an octopus's!" she declared, stretching them out for his examination.

Haunter thought to mention that she didn't know if her father would've still abandoned them with the knowledge of her mother's pregnancy or not, but decided that he had been heartless enough with his words and chose not to voice any more unhappy thoughts. Cynical and pessimistic as ever, he figured he wouldn't feel better about himself about making a young female disfavor her family as he did his own.

Bones was quick to intercept any displeasure however, and turn it into a short, childish laugh. He tipped his head at her, and his expression appeared the closest to a smile as it had ever been. Scamp it is, he confirmed mentally, then looked at her leg as she held it out for him to scrutinize. "Ah," he said, nodding sagely and feigning complete interest in her still-growing limbs. Then he paused, eyes reaching up curiously to her smoky face. "What is an octopus?"

Bones saw the way Haunter's expression almost turned into a smile. Leaning close to him, she whispered, sotto voce, "You can smile, y'know. I won't tell anybody," and then withdrew as if she hadn't said anything of it. Her pale eyes even shifted around as if to pluck out any eavesdroppers but, of course, she found none.

A moment later and much louder, Bones answered, "It's a creature of the sea with a sharp beak and eight wriggly legs! Sometimes they wash up in the bay—Keelhaul Bay in Tortuga—and you stomp 'em. This black stuff squirts out of 'em and you drink it up 'cause it's liquid luck!" Or so said tradition back home, particularly among the Blackflag Crew, for which all black-colored things were favored over others.

Fade in your next post and have another thread soon?

Haunter was amused, but as he was not yet used to being amused, he simply refused the urge to contort his face in a fashion he deemed unlikely to do him any good. He rejected the foreignness of the expression but he figured that with hanging around Swiftcurrent it would only be a matter of time before his stony features eroded slightly. Today wouldn't be that day. He only narrowed his eyes at the sneaky minx and rolled them away in ravishing distaste.

The black wolf wasn't an imaginative fellow, so as she explained what an octopus was, he found himself remembering that he was more of what one would call a "sight learner" and figured that he would simply have to take her word for it. "Keelhaul Bay... in Tortuga," he said after a moment, having chosen what he thought was most important about her sentence; "is that where you're from? I'll pass word around." He paused and prepared to have a long conversation with the young girl.

Shore! :)

He didn't relent, yet Bones didn't hold it against him. She was certain she would get a smile out of him eventually and she would never give up until she did! It was her way to be unfailingly optimistic.

"Aye," she answered, then launched into a lengthy, lilting description of Keelhaul Bay, Turtle Island and all the other landmarks of Tortuga, before moving onto the details of the Blackflag Crew and the rest of her life as a pirate. She yammered on for what felt like hours, mostly because she liked to talk but also because, despite his missing ear, the stone-faced Haunter made a fantastic listener.